April 25, 2019
1:00-2:00 p.m.
Please note: This event is for invited researchers only.
Title:
West Is The… Best! Intercultural Perception In A Globalizing World
Talk description:
In a globalizing world, how do people view cultures of—and not of—their own? We developed the West Is The…Best! and East Is The…Best! scales to assess intercultural perception. Across 7 Western (U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia) and Asian (China, Hong Kong, Korea) cultures, both Westerners and East Asians endorsed West Is The Best more strongly than East Is The Best. Intercultural perception predicted constructs related to multiculturalism (e.g., global orientation, nationalism), cultural ways of being (e.g., self-construal), and social dominance (e.g., social dominance orientation, cultural elitism) among European Americans and Chinese. Further, favorable attitudes towards the West (vs. East) spilled over to preference for Western (vs. Asian) consumer products; increased willingness to invest in technological inventions by Western (vs. Asian) researchers; and greater perception of attractiveness of a Westernized (vs. Asianized) target even among Chinese perceivers. Findings suggest the transmission and adoption of Western values as integral parts of globalization—a globalizing culture is a globalizing Western culture.
Biography:
Kaidi Wu is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Michigan, where she studies culture and globalization. Her research has been featured on Freakonomics Radio and media outlets such as The Atlantic, Quartz, and Inside Higher Ed. She is also a guest contributor at Scientific American.
Research is the heart of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), and we want to make sure that we support each other in developing high quality research. To that end, we created the Adderley Positive Research Incubator for sharing and encouraging POS-related research ideas that are at various stages of development.
Learn more about the Adderley Positive Research Incubator here and direct questions about individual sessions to Amy Young at baldwin@umich.edu.